Years ago, I attempted to switch to using a screen for sheet music. I decided to get an iPad 12.9, forScore, and a Donner Page Turner Pedal.
For whatever reason, this didn't work out back then:
- iPad is a multi-use device for me and so it's basically distraction central #1. It's too glossy, it's too bright. There is something always going on and always something else to do on the iPad. It's just too much screen shining at me, although there are mitigations like warm light and dark mode.
- Conceptually I couldn't really accept forScore for what it was — basically a glorified PDF reader. I expected more, like MusicXML support, and it had none of that. It was a clumsy beast. forScore also puts some features behind a subscription wall, which is sort of annoying and didn't make a good first impression on me.
- Much of my music was in paper form anyway and I felt like I had a good system. (Spoiler: I didn't.)
I eventually gave up entirely on the iPad 12.9 as a form factor for similar reasons as Roger. I found it was too big for my day-to-day use, so I traded it in for an 11.
I will say that the Apple Pencil is a thing of absolute beauty that has no equal. It's also notable that Apple now has a new fancy nano-texture display for the iPad that looks incredible in person but costs megabucks and is thorough overkill.
A year or two ago, I thought E Ink would be the way forward for me. That was a big nope as well. As nice as an E Ink screen is, it's hard to get one with good software that works seamlessly with a bluetooth page turner. And the screen is just too slow anyway. There are refresh problems and glitches that get annoying over time for sheet music.
Forward to today, this thread on PianoTell, and I've discovered the TCL NXTPAPER 14 which had particularly crazy-pricing on Black Friday and is still super cheap for what you get today at $330.
This hardware, at this price, is a game changer for me. The difference with an iPad is that I can leave the NXTPAPER 14 as a semi-permanent fixture on my piano, dedicated to the sole purpose of serving as sheet music reader. The quality of the tablet is stupid good, it's sleek and metal, though I discarded the silly cover it comes with.
Although NXTPAPER is in no way E Ink, it has a very nice matt screen which is absolutely massive, and it has e-reader modes that work very well and might almost pass for an illuminated E Ink screen. I use the low saturation color mode, usually with the brightness at the minimum of 2%. And although the tablet has limited viewing angles, it's a fixture on my piano, so that's not a problem.
Android itself needed some tweaks. MSN on the home screen? Please. All distractions are removed, notifications are gone, I have very generous display unlock settings, social media is banished, and AI is being leveraged for maximum impact at the piano.
I changed the Launcher and set everything up so that MobileSheets is the focus of it all. A touch of the pedal is all that's needed! The pen works fine, though the buttons can't be used with MobileSheets.
The primary challenge is getting all my sheet music into the app. Some of it is by cheating e.g. finding existing PDFs of sheet music I own. For sheet music I care about, I scan it, and for sheet music I don't care so much about (like scales), I take photo scans of it directly from the app.
What I absolutely love about this arrangement is that I have my practice set all arranged and ready to go for the entire week. I'm focusing on every thing I need to, it's all in front of me just as I left it, and it's liberating.
This is the beauty and joy of a dedicated setup.
